I wrote this in October.

The pregnancy test. October 20th 2015

On Friday I can take the test. I’ve been waiting 2 weeks since the insemination's- eating well, trying to not allow the dicks on the bus and family issues stress me out- keeping my body and womb calm and ‘ready’ for a microscopic fetus to inhabit. Thrive with joy and radiating only goodness. My wife is in the mountains with our dog this week. The house is crazy quiet without them here, the neighbors next door just moved out as well, so it feels very empty on this corner. The sun sets pretty early now and staying up past 8:30pm is excruciatingly hard. I work from home so my days are amorphous, running across paper days like watercolors and sometimes like renegade india ink, a mess if I am not on top of it. But I never forget to take my meds. I’ve been on Lithium for almost 6 years, it makes me forget EVERYTHING. But somehow I always remember to take my meds. I drink gallons of water everyday out of giant mason jars- my body is like a white ice sculpture made of salt (lithium salt), no matter the amount of water I toss at the salt structure, it’s insatiable, I am constantly craving water. Physiologically, emotionally, craving. 

Needless to say, this fun hydrating fact has made the OPK testing difficult to say the least. Not to mention the Basal Thermometer recordings. I am up and down all night stumbling in the dark and over the dog to go pee, making it literally impossible to get an ‘accurate temperature’ recording. The deal is ridiculous, one must take a vaginal temperature first thing in the morning- without ANY movement, without even speaking, laying perfectly still in bed at the same time EVERY morning). Seriously. I’ll flop back down on my side of the bed at 5:54am coming back from my 6th time peeing throughout the night, my alarm goes off six minutes later at 6:00am to take my ‘Still Body Temperature’, geez. So this fertility tracking method is not the most helpful. 

I never considered the many ways to zero in on ones fertility… I never gave my fertility any thought with having 98% female partners, birth control was something my friends would talk about, like some college trip abroad to a county I new nothing about. I would listen, no idea what to think, no experience, blank. Hmmm, sounds interesting. 

Anyway, when it comes down to it the female reproductive system is a mysterious wonderland that cannot be snatched up and clearly analyzed. It is a moving target with emotional pieces changing it up, influencing, swaying, plus physical influences tipping and teetering the whole crazy combo of factors. Add in Lithium meds, sleeping in a room that's not pitch black, the moon, Welbutrin, depression, saunas, acupuncture cold swimming pools, caffeine, food, hours of sleep, stress, hydration, organic foods, white sugar, negative people and feelings, light cardio vs. jolting the body too much on the treadmill. Remembering to not take Alieve (recently allergic, hence the Giant Puffy Face reaction). What else have I been trying to remember, but not obsess over and get stressed out about? 

Let’s go back and re-cap the last at home insemination. The October try. We ordered the sperm 2x the day before we think I was going to ovulate and a day or two after we think I ovulated. It all feels truly confusing, like a crazy shot in the dark. We are trying, but when/ if that white stick says PREGNANT I will loose it (total shock). I don’t know if I’ll believe it- just the science of it all is overwhelming. A miricle. But, most things I do in life-

just keep at it

eventually I get somewhere, and later on down the road random people will ask me how I have found success with this or that, and I think, geez, I don’t know- I just kept doing it. 

But trying to get pregnant, to just keep doing it, well, it is a special process for us. 

Emails. Donor. Overnight Delivery. Fed Ex Live Specimen. PayPal. Time sensitive window. DIY injection. Praying to god those swimmers survived the ‘formula mixture’ and refrigerated trip across America. Praying they find the giant egg that hangs out for a mere 24 hours, before turning into a pumpkin… until next month. 

Next month the dates are ready and circled. Tiny window, do all the things. 

the candyhouse lure

My resolution was to write more. Write at all. The thing about stopping is that its terrible to begin again. An indistinguishable giant hurdle. Most humans feel that, or so they say that about habits- do it for seven days and it will stick. Seven days? Something like that. Here goes.

Feelings.

I've cried more in the last week or so than in a long time, since my wedding time. unfortunately for the storylines in my head- they have not been tears of joy. I am not super great about re-contextualizing my experience after intense feelings. It becomes a cemented shape, a sloppy smear in the freshly poured walkway. Not a cute paw print
 an embarrassing mistake that's stuck forever. Anyone could notice it, at any point in eternity.
A permanence.

This could be my root of shame central. The imprints of everything around me that I can't ever undoes.
What people say to me, don't say to me, how they behave and everything that lacks in my life. It feels so excruciatingly embarrassing and painful. And I know I can't do anything about it, and its not me, not my fault, its my perception, etc. etc. But this haunting feels so shockingly permanent on the skin of my existence. Its the landscape that runs up and into my pores and suffocates me, mudslides I am buried under- fossilized. Twenty years later still unsure where my human skin is and where it has transformed to clay, earth, mummified and stuffed with straw.
Logically I know. I'm no virgin to Al Anon. The fifty million books I've read on the subjects.







I know.




And I have no idea,
No idea how to feel better. Approaching this aspect of ones life over and over is indefinitely confusing. Desperate to get through and solve and heal and make the future better is a morbid addiction- suffering like this, I would truly do anything, and I have.

You come across it. Alone in the thick of the freezing forest, that same tree, the path you memorized, the huge boulder with the slant along the rugged side, pressed into the mountain.
I swear your seen it/ never seen it before. The longer you try to see the more unsure and totally bewildered you become.
Everything dissolves in the dusk, in the shivering.
Your unsure what your doing out at night and if you had a mission...
How did you out at this hour?
Could this have happened again?

Desperate.

All the smooth deep emerald black shapes slowly swooshing in the air
all around you feels familiar, and terrible. This is that nightmare.
Tricked and cheated, anger all over my face and boiling out of my frozen limbs. Not a single memory as to how I fell out of that warm cottage
I lived somewhere warm, then plunked down in this scene. Its a completely true nightmare.
I can't stop crying now.



If I could just find one gumdrop that would lead me to the winches house.

I would gladly devour the glowing tiles and siding, feel the stickiness and sparkle close to my face, feel artificial color and bounciness,
a job I can handle.

forget that joker of a crossroads I was paralyzed at

I'd end up inside that dungeon she concocted, but I swear to god it would feel like a home. Knowing I would in fact be eaten alive would feel particularly calming.
No more block ice thudding at my scull, no more horrific shame of continual circular migration paths in and out of desperation. Each time returning being met by no one.

Let me just eat this stupid house and then the house eats me.

Let the story end just as it did before- inside all the houses that imploded on the frenzied groping children
The blasted minds numb and ringing from all the searching and a wanting that pulls down so hard you literally can't feel gravity, and UP no longer has a meaning.
Just let the candy house stand empty, freeze over and become a testament to all the horrible places we tried to find to hide from this.


And there are none.

And the only thing left it to believe in is god. God is much bigger that gumdrops. God doesn't even know what gum drops are.
When I leave this cracked body I will forget what gum drops are too, god-like, I will let go of everything, because somehow
the suffering will seem little, but the forest will take on a new language.
 Anything green and swooshing around the earth will be decoded
 bigger, perfectly, orderly, divine.


While I'm still breathing
I'll keep trying

To harbor this vantage point

The dark night looks over, wanting.

what i used to love has been pushed way way over
softer things, disciplined behaviors
mint tea, hate it
no bread, just spinach
 no.
running the length of the city- from one body of water to the other
no.
perfect nails, hair dyed, body thin.
No.

I hate the way I had to run to calm down, but I had to.
when I was the sickest they always liked me more.
People think your happy, or they feel happy
when your thinner



it was always with me.
fast fast fast fast fast fast everything cranked up to the max max max
water, running, levitate above my bed, sleeping w/ one eye closed, the other still going
how cartoons see everything, around the corners even
I didn't need anything when it was like this
I didn't need.

I only needed out- get all the energy out
a racing body, a mind whipped into a tense, muscular trajectory: go.
no amount of activity, work, love, people, places could soothe the big and manic throbbing.



and then there is always this too.

the long and heavy drop
the sinking down
heavy meat dropping in a cold sea. under a starless sky
the red flesh becoming purple, then grey and finally gone.
a mass at the bottom, the sting, the sand slurping it down.
It becomes a settling that begins to look like decomposing.
The terrible part is
 I don't.
I stay there, wholly intact, conscious. Invisible in the darkness, without limbs, without a face.

It's impossible to feel that old spinning, the energy required to pull out of this plucked out like death.
everything is this limbless, drowned state, pulling down-
I want so bad to have back the mania, that insane urge to make make make,
it just went, the terrible bulldozer inside, involuntary
the shaking and levitating. set to ON.


NO.
is so absurd, how its too fast and the inability to hear, touch down
or this
buried, amoeba like, motionless, utter sadness under layers and layers of millions of pounds of sand
pressing down under millions of gallons of dark salt water
I want them to come find me here.
Under all the sand I am still here.

sounds and shapes

it hurts like a boulder is massive
a shape too big to hug, a weight too incomprehensible to budge
when will these landmarks shift
is this the correct map?
my inside landscape feels like a natural disasters leftover carnage
trying trying to re-root
trying trying to make life life-like again

i want myself out of myself
all this thudding is a bore
a tennis shoe in the dryer
ongoing forever annoying myself with my sadness
become something new
turn into a sandal
a thinner, less offensive version of the thud causer

i hold my breath all the time waiting for it
it whirls and whirls hot air and cloth movements then it
hits
a shocking thud

always surprising

forever thudding

a sore heart, burning eyes, aching chest
ravaged insides
trying trying
to be a life

same story

I like to use the technique of avoidance
when everything gets so close up again and the pores of the situation are visible
but the shape of the thing is not
I like to not
write anything down
not take pictures

I sometimes pick up my camera, the one a man gave me in Florida
but then I always put it down and run out the door w/ my purse flying saying in my head
I Don't Want To Remember This Part of My Life.
I keep waiting for it to change.
for that thought to pass. Its been almost three years and its still  hanging on

the shame.


the big sad body
of water



I'm afraid to write in my journal because I don't want to really see it
IN WRITING
these on going feelings
ivy growing like mad regardless of all the hacking
regardless of all the man hours, the fierce work, the calloused exhaustion
tearstearstears

perhaps I should move outdoors where everything is green and architecture doesn't disrupt the mad amounts of growing.
When everything is green with water inside and veins and soil fed
hard shapes we try and make can be a terrible juxtaposition.

 bark pants are fine

I'll write some lines about my feelings

How he wanted to kill her.
Kicked in the stomach fear.
A neglect that leaves one invisible
Without voice.
But now I get to be an adult.
And try to be happy.
It looks amazing over there...
everyday try not to throw yourself under the bus
now you get to practice everyday making a life not terrifying
now you get to be in charge and hopefully not destroy all the survival
you survived

our skeletal structure. our organs. our faces. Or trying not to hate myself in this family.

my body and heart are uncontrollable organs and piles of flesh running out of this room. Every cell is spinning shot full of adrenaline, desperate... the kind of breathing an face that happens when you are all snot and saliva and tears and vomit is just a moment away. The whole body is wreaked with the work of movement, of escape.

Sitting between my two parents is like that.

they are screaming and shaking. His face is red like the alcoholic painting in your mind, the grey white hair   surrounding the red center like a halo. A Christmas wreath on the doorknob screaming. A life you keep wanting to not live but continues to unravel and build in depth and strength. The roots are thick, they look cut as they have gown around human made objects like fences and side walks and pipes. The roots seem melted around them, like hot lava poured, then hardened.

it feel like it should cut, like how they look. But it's so expected at this point. it's just the numb terrible dull ache you always feel in that one spot where that thing happened that one time when you were that age.

There is not much use in wishing it away. I told my mom on mother day, today, at sushi lunch in the cement parking lot of a strip mall by the LA freeways that some children are killed by there parents. They literally don't make it out alive,
so I am thankful. They were not so much homicidal. So far we have all survived the suicide, that seems the closest culprit to our survivals theses days, in one way or another...
trying to keep ourselves alive
trying to get up and out of bed everyday
trying to take the pills and not drink the poison and look both ways and check for marks on her body, look for signs of abuse, try not to become a smoker again, see if she can get a ride cause you're too tired to go get her.


Walking into this house is like walking into a toxic waste dump. I need so much gear and right ow I cannot afford to check a bag. I show up with nothing.
Or I feel naked, with open wounds still
and the air is salt and lemon juice here.
Fifteen years of therapy inside my head and leaked down into my body is something, but this is serious, I need metal armor and giant swords and magical things I don't even know about because I don't read fantasy, don't watch Sci-Fi movies or any kind of violent things.....

I'm like tiny albino bunny that cant be in the sun or around loud noises or touched at all unless you wear special fluffy gloves. I am too traumatized for reality.

Monochromatic situations soothe me.

feed me from a dropper.

talk about my species and how we used to live before the humans came and made us almost extinct, and mutated and dependent.

tell me about my life before it was like this, tell me everything I don't remember and wish was true.

terrible: sleeping/waking/sleeping/waking

Being raped by the dream man on the dirty side of the motel land was less painful than seeing her.
I was getting used to picking around the crusty dilapidated surroundings, trying to find a safe place to stash my few possessions
Squatters wandering like Thai dogs, homeless wolves.
Unending despair, heavy like a sopping wet down comforter, speckled with mold, stained with human markings. All this was bearable.
It wasn't until She walked out of the space and over to the picnic table that I snapped.
my heart ripping aching thudding tearing uncontrollable achey longing sadness despair
She spoke to everyone but me 
my eyes were like a cat on a bird, pointing. She never once glanced my way
everything inside me wanted out of the skin case/ i wanted to hack off my limbs/ to decompose, to begin to feel nothing/ for once
to represent the hallow that I felt.
Mom tried to say she didn't matter and why
I defended her viciously
It had been years since I saw her and she was older now, and a transman, 52 years old with a 14 year old daughter.
None of that blunted the sharpness of how hard I wanted her to want me again. It's an indescribable ache, a thirst like maybe you'll die of dehydration.
I feel numb all over my waking body. I don't know how to be awake and my sleep is too often the situation above. My body wants to cry all day like the springtime rain.

be the same.
try to act like soil, then see.

I am inconsolable
I am perpetually heartbroken